Dr Salinas feels it when he gives someone else an injection.Credit:John Woudstra

His mirror-touch synesthesia means that if he sees someone getting slapped on the wrist, he feels the same sensation on his own wrist.

He gives the example of seeing people eating and feeling the sensation of chewing or drinking but without getting the taste of the food, and of getting caught off guard by seeing someone get punched.

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US neurologist Joel Salinas has a condition that allows him to feel what other people feel.

Dr Salinas, who also works at a hospital, says that whenever he performs a spinal injection on a patient, he feels the needle piercing his back.

He has also seen patients die and has had the unique experience of feeling as though he had almost died as well.

"More than anything, there's just such a pronounced feeling of stillness. A kind of emptiness that screams that there should be something there, but it's gone now ... with the added weight of permanence," he wrote on social news website Reddit.

But he said his mirror-touch synesthesia was one of the reasons why he became a neurologist as the condition helped to give him more insights into what his patients were feeling.

Dr Salinas also has other forms of synesthesia, a brain condition where senses intermingle, meaning someone can hear colours or taste sounds.

This condition also helped in his line of work, saying that during a physical exam of a patient the sound of fluid in the abdomen manifested to him as "rounded, yellow, and with little frayed spikes".

He said watching good movies could also be an immersive experience. "It feels as though I almost lose the boundaries of myself and sort of just become the movie. It's like having a dream while awake," he said.

But the top-voted question to him on Reddit by a large margin was: "what happens when you watch porn?"